Why you could soon be watching HD movies on your phone

Nvidia launches APX 2500 mobile chip capable of displaying 720p

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Nvidia has unveiled a powerful new smartphone processor at this week’s World Mobile Congress in Barcelona. Nvidia claims the APX 2500 will allow users to stream, watch or even take movies in 720p HD, take 12-megapixel pictures and play a whole host of complex 3D mobile games.

The new chip is powered by an ARM11 MPCore and features graphics architecture similar to the company’s high-end GeForce 6 desktop version.

iPhone-beater?

Designed with the assistance of Microsoft, the APX 2500 will be fully OpenGL ES 2.0 and Direct3D Mobile compliant, and compatible only with Windows Mobile devices.

Nvidia is confident that the new chip could be used as the starting point for the development of an iPhone-beater. Toshiba and Texas Instruments have also released HD-capable mobile chips in the past month as Windows-based smartphone manufacturers desperately try to emulate everything that’s good about the iPhone.

However, Apple’s dominance looks set to continue for some time yet as Nvidia doesn’t expect to start shipping production APX 2500 chips until June, with the first APX 2500-enabled devices not expected to surface until at least the end of the year.

By then, of course, the iPhone will probably be available as a 3G, 100GB version with a 10-megapixel camera and 1080p Full HD video streaming.